I have a ticket to Trinity May Ball. Hurrah for me. *Cue envious rage from reader, generic comment about Trinity being rich and annoying, and one golden ticket to the best of what May Week has to offer...*

At least, I hope that this is the reaction that the possession of a Trinity May Ball ticket will elicit. Because this is definitely what I expected when I departed, oh so painfully, with my £155, plus an extra 5 for a poster. I expected lights, entertainment and lifelong memories. The second best party in the world according to Time Magazine, Vanity Fair and God. Second only to the Oscars, and that’s just because they don’t have to use their budget to attract celebrities.The kind of party where Justin Timberlake popping down for one night of glory does not seem so far-fetched. 

Yet, this does not quite sum it up. There was something more in that May Ball Ticket. Something in that automated payment confirmation email that I can’t quite put my finger on. A “heightened sensitivity to the promise of life”, “a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other” invitation. 

Yes, in that May Ball Ticket was the promise of The Great Gatsby. The closest I will ever come to a truly Fitzgeraldian evening, with a bar in full swing, floating rounds of cocktails and, in true 1920s spirit, a jazz band to top it all off. 

Alas, however, the realist in me was not so sure. As Nick Carraway sat alone at the bar, estranged, alone, “within and without”, I, too, feared my night “among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” may not live up the Baz Luhrmann-esque craze that is a Gatsby party. And perhaps we are deluding ourselves, with the whole May Ball myth, that such an event ever could.

For while I yearn for “yellow cocktail music”, laughter “spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word” and groups that “dissolve and form in the same breath”, my experience of Cindies has taught me that our language will be alcoholic in quite a different way – sub liquidity of imagery for slurred words and vodka-fuelled fights. And anyway, without the illicit cloak of prohibition, no May Ball will ever again give our alcohol consumption that same symbolic resonance it had when we were 17 and drinking in spite of the law. 

Moreover, what really is a Gatsby party without its Gatsby, its Carraway and its Daisy Buchanan? Well, I think, I certainly can’t be Daisy because she’s passive and annoying. Could give Gatsby a go. I am not quite willing, however, to set myself apart from my guests by remaining sober, despite its rather mudane legality (see earlier part of article where I mentioned spending £155). Nor are they really my guests, so I suppose the role of Gatsby is better left to our May Ball Committee President. 

So, I continue to flick through my copy of Gatsby, wondering which fictional character will best represents my experience of a May Ball (who says student journalism is self-indulgent?). Then, it strikes me. 

Why would we want our May Balls to be like Gatsby parties at all?

Surely the commercial, capitalist emptiness of the whole novel is not something to strive for. Sure we can have our fireworks, and champagne and oysters. But outside the dazzle of West Egg will always be the dumping ground of the Valley of Ashes. After a garden party, there will always be Life. Anyway, surely any party where we are “antagonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity” will only hinder and not help the already elitist interpretation that our oh so fine university has managed to acquire. The leering eyes of Dr. T J Eckleburg (otherwise known as the Daily Mail) would not approve. 

No, the more I think about it, comparing Trinity May Ball to a Gatsby affair is something of a PR crisis waiting to happen (and yes, I am thinking of St Edmund having to change their Gone with the Wind theme). Completely unacceptable to us ideologically-motivated, CUSU-Women’s-Campaign-signed-up, egalitarian students. 

And yet...

I bought my ticket. I shelled out the 155. I bought a dress and I as I struggle through my last essay, I watch Gatsby to show me the green light at the end of the tunnel (or should I say across the dock?).

Maybe we love our May Balls both in spite of and because of their Gatsby-esque nature.

Because despite all the elitist associations, expensive ticket prices and confusion I get from friends back home, only Trinity May Ball, the May Ball that gives its name to this article, is exempt from my reaction – the May Ball, which represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn*. 

*See what I did there, the May Ball is a metaphor for Gatsby.